Academic literature on the topic 'Folklore in literature'

<p> Cinderella stories are one of the most popular fairy tales in the world. At the same time, they are most stigmatized by people for describing a weak and passive female protagonist. To discover possible explanations for this continuing popularity of Cinderella stories, I chose to analyze the Kongjwi Patjwi story, one of the Cinderella tales in Korea. The Kongjwi Patjwi story is one of the well-known folktales in Korea that has been adapted for children since the beginning of the 20th century. Since the Kongjwi Patjwi story is not familiar to many western people, I first analyze two of the folklore versions of Kongjwi Patjwi to prove that this story is also one kind of Cinderella tale. Both of them have the "innocent, persecuted heroine" theme, which is one of the most distinctive features of Cinderella tales. In one version, the plot follows almost exactly the same trajectory as European Cinderella tales in that it has the lost shoe motif and marriage with the Prince. The biggest difference between the Korean Cinderella and other Cinderella stories is that there is another plot in the Korean Cinderella story as the passive protagonist matures and becomes an independent woman. In some of the adapted fairy tale versions for children, this plot does not appear and the Korean Cinderella becomes another passive girl who is rescued by her Prince Charming. One of the reasons for this change is that the mothers, the buyers of the children's books, want the "Prince Charming's rescue" plot because they find that it is hard to become an independent woman in Korean society. To accommodate the consumers' wants and needs, publishers intentionally change the plots with passive protagonists. The folklore version of Kongjwi Patjwi actually suggests a more independent and mature female character which would be a good role model for many young boys and girls.</p>

The practice of secondary world building, the creation of a fantasy realm with its own unique laws and systems has long been a tradition within the genre of fantasy writing. In many notable cases, such as those publications by J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft, folklore exhibited in the world of the reader has been specifically used not only to construct these fantasy realms, but to add depth and believability to their presentation. The universe of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series demonstrates this same practice of folklore-as-world-building, yet her construction does much more than just create a fantasy realm. By using both folklore which predates her writing as well as created elements which while unique to her secondary world specifically reflect the world of the reader, Rowling is able to create a fantasy realm which is highly political, complex and multivocal, yet still accessible to young readers through its familiarity. Specifically through her use of cryptids, belief representation, and folk narratives both invented and recontextualized, Rowling is able to juxtapose her fantasy universe to the real-world of the reader, in effect inventing a believable secondary world but also demonstrating to young readers the ways in which her writing should be interpreted.

The antebellum American South was a site of continual human mobility and social fluidity. This cultivated a pattern of cultural exchange between black, indigenous, and white Southerners, especially in the Old Southwest, making the region a cultural borderland as well as a geographical one. This environment resulted in the creolization of many aspects of life in the region. to date, the literature of the Old South has yet to be studied in this context. This project traces the diffusion of African-American and Native American culture in white-authored Southern texts.;For instance, textual evidence in Old Southwestern Humor reveals a pattern of adaptations of folklore belonging to African-Americans. Johnson Jones Hooper's Some Adventures of Simon Suggs (1845) in particular reflects the presence of plots and motifs that originated in African trickster tales. Not all white Southern authors were menable to creolization, though. Novelists like William Gilmore Simms drew from but resisted the complete integration of non-white folklore in his historical romances. Native Americans and their culture frequently appear in his The Yemassee (1835), for instance, but always in a separate sphere.;The differences associated with the creolization of Old Southwestern Humor and the lack thereof in Southern historical romances reflect a distinction in Southern attitudes toward westward expansion and its social implications. In particular, the degree to which these authors did or did not resist creolization reflects their opinion about patterns of antebellum emigration and the backwoods social fluidity that contributed to the phenomenon of cultural exchange. Older conservatives like Simms, for instance, perceived the Old Southwest as a threat due to its rowdiness, materialism, and permeable social class. Novels by these authors displaced this milieu into the colonial past at an historical moment at which it became stabilized. The consequent elimination of Native Americans by whites in these texts marked a symbolic victory for order and stasis.;The texts of younger emigres to the South like Hooper reflect an alternate perspective. their embrace of the creative opportunities made possible by the social instability of the Old Southwest corresponds to their enthusiasm for the economic and social promise afforded by this recently settled region. In other words, the authors' openness to creolization mirrors a tolerance of the chaos born of mobility and a lack of structure. Suggs's antisocial exploits are adapted from African-American trickster tales whose characteristic disdain for authority and subversiveness contribute to Hooper's satire of traditional attitudes, including paternalism, which sought to limit this social flux.;These texts' competing viewpoints of the frontier allow scholars to get a sense of the diversity of social and political thought in the region---there was no monolithic Mind of the Old South. Additionally, acknowledging that these texts are a product of the multicultural environment reveals the contributions of Africans and Native Americans to Southern literature at its formative stage.